A Swedish university professor sent a team of elite mercenaries to an ISIS-held warzone to rescue one of her students after he told her he would not be able to finish his thesis on time.

Chemistry professor Charlotta Turner assembled a crack-team of security forces to track down Firas Jumaah, who had become trapped in his home town in Iraqi Kurdistan when ISIS attacked in the summer of 2014.

Mr Jumaah had been studying for his PhD at Lund University, southern Sweden, but had returned to Iraq after hearing from his wife that ISIS had taken over the neighbouring village and were targeting their people, the Yazidi.

The Islamist terror group's persecution of the Yazidi people in northern Iraq has since been recognised as genocide, with ISIS fighters slaughtering men and boys and kidnapping women and girls to turn them into sex slaves.